Read “Orders Regarding ‘Non-Jews Who Help Jews’” aloud to students before
reading “Voices of Conscience”

Read Student booklet, Reading 13A, “The Voices of Conscience” aloud, posing
the question at the end of each example. (EACH OF THESE IS A TRUE EXAMPLE)

After student responses to each example, read the “Results”

ORDERS REGARDING “NON-JEWS WHO HELP JEWS”

Hans Frank, Governor General of Nazi-occupied Poland, issued his Order of
October 15, 1941: “All persons hiding Jews outside (any) ghetto will be punished
by death.”

Poles, Germans and Jews all knew that this was no empty threat. Punishment
for even the slightest help to Jews was quick and brutal. This punishment
often took the form of public hangings or shootings.

On October 1, 1942, SS Commander Rauter, military commander of Amsterdam,
sent the following message to Reichsfuehrer Himmler: “Every Jew anywhere
in Holland and non-Jews who help Jews will be rounded up and shipped
to (Auschwitz).” Himmler wrote in the margin of this note, “Sehr gut,” which
means very good.

Reading 13A

VOICES OF CONSCIENCE

SALONIKA, GREECE: After Greece was occupied by the Germans in 1941,
the Nazis requested the head Greek Orthodox priest to hand over a list of
Jews in that city. The priest told the SS he could identify only Greeks, without
any religious distinction.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: there were no reprisals, no punishments. Later, the 60,000 Jews
of Salonika were, nevertheless, identified by someone else and sent to Auschwitz
where approximately 55,000 died.

MINSK, RUSSIA: Wilhelm Kube {kew-beh}, Nazi Generalkommissar
of White Russia (central, western district of Russia), repeatedly refused
to allow mass murders of Jews who had been deported from Germany to Minsk.
Although Kube protected German Jews, he had fewer qualms about killing Russian
Jews. While he did not vigorously object to the murder of Russian Jews, he
objected to any brutal and inhumane treatment of the Jews while they were
alive.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: There were discussions between Kube and SS officials but no reprisals
or punishments.

Results: The doctors were reassigned to other duties like the “infirmary.”
No reprisals, no punishments.

EUROPE: There are many examples of Nazis who refused to participate
in the killing process; some members of the SS would not be a party to mass
shootings; some Nazi Party members would not engage in anti-Jewish activities.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: In no known cases were these people punished, probably because the
SS could not afford to turn moral choices into controversial debates. The
SS leaders simply reassigned those who refused to play a role in the destruction
of the Jews.

NOTE TO TEACHER: These are examples of people who refused to participate
directly in the murder of the Jews. By refusing, they made moral choices and
indirectly rescued Jews. They are not to be confused with people, including
soldiers and some Nazis, who actively helped the Jews by hiding them, aiding
in their escape or providing false documents or protection of any sort. When
discovered, these people were punished swiftly and mercilessly by the SS.

A LABOR CAMP NEAR AUSCHWITZ, POLAND: Seeing that a 15-year-old boy
had been badly beaten while working on a cement detail, a German civilian
engineer, who was an I.G. Farben supervisor, detoured him from his way to
the infirmary where he would have died. The engineer hid the boy each day
for the next three days so that the boy could rest.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: Pretending to use the boy for his assistant, the engineer brought
the boy food and medicine until his wounds could heal. He then secured the
boy a job in the kitchen of the camp, saving the boy’s life. They never met
after that. The boy survived and knows that, had the engineer been caught,
they both would have been killed.

WARSAW, POLAND: A Polish girl was visited one night by a Jewish friend
who pleaded to be hidden from the Nazis. Although the Polish girl knew that
hiding Jews might mean death for her and her family, she took her in.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: The Polish girl hid her friend for several weeks until the Jewish
girl could escape to the partisans in the forest. The Polish girl and her
family hid other Jews later and were finally caught by the Nazis. She and her
father were sent to Auschwitz—she survived, but her father did not.

UKRAINE: In 1941, an old farmer discovered a family of four Jews hiding
in his barn. His young wife was extremely superstitious and anti-Semitic,
but he was a devout Christian and believed it was a sin to murder Jews. He
offered the family refuge in the loft of his barn. He told his wife to say
nothing to anyone - not even his young children.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: The Jewish family hid in the loft for two and a half years. They
had to remain silent and still for the days and through most of the nights
for fear that the farmer’s wife or his children would turn them over to the
Germans. When the Russian Army approached the Ukraine, the terrified farmer
fled with his family. The Jewish family was found by the Russians who gave
them medical care and food. The Jews never saw the farmer again.

DENMARK: Although the German Army occupied Denmark from 1940 on, Danish
officials from King Christian X to railroad employees to police officers all
refused to cooperate with the Gestapo. They would not identify Jews and refused
to introduce anti-Jewish measures of any kind.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: There were no reprisals, no punishments. Even the German Army began
to falter in its duty, refusing to help the SS round up Jews. Conscience was
contagious and Himmler had to send new recruits to attempt to round up Danish
Jews. Of the approximately 7,800 Jews in Denmark, over 7,200 were saved through
a massive national effort to transport Jews by boat to Sweden where they were
given sanctuary.

RAOUL WALLENBERG: Raoul Wallenberg (1912-?) was a Swedish diplomat
who saved thousands of Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust. He prevented
their deportation to concentration and death camps during the German occupation
of Hungary in the spring and summer of 1944.

Wallenberg was born in Stockholm Sweden. His family was wealthy and included
bankers, diplomats and industrialists. He traveled widely as a youth and could
speak several languages. He studied architecture and city planning at the
University of Michigan and graduated from there in 1935. He then worked for
a business firm in South Africa and for a Dutch bank in Haifa, Palestine,
where he met Jewish refugees from Germany in the late 1930s.

In 1944, he was working with the Swedish consulate in Budapest, Hungary.
As a neutral country, Sweden could offer refuge for those who claimed Swedish
citizenship. Wallenberg placed thousands of Jews in buildings under Swedish
government authority where they were protected from the Nazis. He also distributed
counterfeit passports and identification papers to thousands more who were
scheduled for deportation to Auschwitz. With the forged papers secured by
Wallenberg, these Hungarian Jews were given legal status as Swedish citizens,
and thereby saved.

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: Wallenberg’s assistance to Jews was known by German authorities.
Because of the war and confusion in Hungary and because the SS could prove
nothing, Wallenberg narrowly escaped being arrested and sent to a concentration
camp or executed. He became the hero of those Hungarian Jews who knew that
this aristocratic non-Jew, who could easily have avoided danger, was risking
his life for them. (Wallenberg disappeared in January 1945, when left Budapest
in the custody of two Russian officers. He is presumed to have been arrested.
The reason is unclear. In 1957, the Soviet government, which had refused to
acknowledge Wallenberg’s presence, reported that he had died in prison of
a heart attack in 1947. Yet, some former Soviet prisoners testified that they
had seen him as late as 1976 in a labor camp. On October 5, 1981, the U.S.
Congress made Wallenberg an honorary U.S. citizen.)

OSKAR SCHINDLER: Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi Party and
a German businessman. Prior to the war, he had a reputation as a womanizer
and heavy drinker. During the war, he was put in charge of a German factory
near Krakow, Poland, to produce utensils for the German Army. In 1940, he
employed 150 Jewish workers; by 1942, he employed 500. As the SS began to
deport Jews to death camps, Schindler worked to protect them. He brought and
kept whole families together, including old and “unproductive” people. He
would often socialize with SS Commandant Goeth {get}, one of the most sadistic
and murderous of the camp commanders. Through this socializing, however, he
was able to save Jews, once even playing cards with Goeth for the life of
a Jewish woman who worked in Goeth’s house. Through his connections with high-ranking
SS officials and businessmen, Schindler was able to secure extra food and
medical supplies for his workers.

By 1944, Schindler was able to provide over 1,000 Jews with work cards that
saved them from deportation to Auschwitz. He called them “his” Jews, and they
all recognized that it was his personal courage that was keeping them alive.
He continued to bribe SS guards and buy extra rations through illegal channels.
When the Germans retreated from Eastern Poland in 1944, they took apart their
factories and killed Jewish workers. Schindler managed to save his workers
by transferring them as a group to another factory in Western Czechoslovakia.

What do you think happened to him?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: He was questioned by the Gestapo several times and even imprisoned
for short periods. He always managed, however, to use his influence or his
money to bribe his way out of trouble. He and his wife Emilie, are credited
with saving over 1,000 Jewish lives.

WARSAW, POLAND: In October 1942, a group of non-Jewish fighters in
the Polish underground led by Colonel Henryk Wolinski and a Jew, Adolf Berman,
formed the organization known as Zegota. It was devoted to rescuing
Jews in Warsaw and Kracow

What do you think happened?

Suggestion for discussion:

Results: By smuggling people out of the ghetto, Zegota was able to save
between 4,000 and 6,000 Jews, most of whom were children.